My New Year’s resolution is to keep my cool as I make my annual trip to Newton police traffic bureau – wherever it may be this year – to obtain my $25 parking permit.
In this case, I look to Boston as a beacon of administrative simplification and reasonableness – and find you can renew your parking permit online, for free. No needless trip to city hall, no haggling with police officers about which payment I’m not allowed to use. In Boston, it’s straightforward like it should be. In Newton, it’s unnecessarily burdensome and bureaucratic.
Yet I go every year between the hours of 9 and 5, Monday through Friday so I can park in front of my home. I would love 2020 to be the year when Newton City Hall tackles this customer service issue.
They won’t tackle the parking fee because those who are impacted by it are primarily those who are marginalized by Newton’s local govt. In other words, those of us with small lot sizes North of the Pike.
It’s one of the most blatant examples of NIMBYism behind no parking meters in Waban.
Both issues could be solved by a single City Council vote but won’t be. The best way to solve this issue would be a referendum, but that takes time and money.
@ Kristin, where do you live in Newton where you can get a permit to park on the street in front of your house? We have a two hour limit Monday through Saturday
Sounds like an item council should look into. Kristin, please send this comment to us on public safety and transportation.
I’m with @Claire. Is there a parking permit that allows street parking beyond the posted limits?
There are a few neighborhood parking districts where residents can obtain parking/visitor passes but it’s limited to the street that they live on, and the districts themselves are limited to specific streets. You can see the details of each district towards the bottom of the Transportation Dept page under “Neighborhood Parking Plans” – http://www.newtonma.gov/gov/dpw/transportation/default.asp
These are mainly around some of the schools (ex. NNHS) to limit students flooding all the side streets and some of the transit areas (ex. Auburndale CR) where commuters were flooding all the side streets so the passes were implemented to allow local residents to maintain their on street parking if needed.
@Patrick, are parking time limits the tool intended to address commuters parking all day on residential streets? Those are what keep me from being able to park in front of my house beyond 2 hours
Looking at the maps, it seems that all of the areas that offer parking permits are streets where the residents most likely have a driveway. Why should they have the privilege of being able to park on the street that other residents don’t have? I’m certainly not going to cry a river if someone who does get such a privilege has to put up with a little inconvenience. But perhaps I am missing something. Kristin, what is the rationale that you are eligible for a parking permit and what rights does it give you?
@Claire – Most likely, if you’re on a residential street with restrictions it’s probably to deter long term parking by commuters/students/business customers depending on what is near by. My understanding is that originally these would have been put up on an ad-hoc basis from resident complaints with the village parking districts being implemented later to allow for permits to maintain resident parking.
So if you live in one of the defined parking districts you should be able to get a permit to park on your street along with visitor tags, outside of that I don’t think there’s any general permit to bypass restrictions but it would be worth reaching out to your ward councilor to see what the options are, might be possible to make the case to convert your area into a new district. It’s also worth noting that the permit doesn’t override the winter parking ban or winter emergencies, it just overrides the X-hour limit during the day.
@Claire because some of us have one car garages with only one car driveways, so if anyone comes to visit they can’t park on the street for more than two hours, so we need the permits to park our own cars on the street while visitors use our driveway. The payment process every year in person is annoying and should be upgraded to online renewal.
Jan, I have no garage and my guest must park on the street. Two hour limit 6 days a week. So sorry if I’m not going to worry about the process that so few of us are even get to take advantage of.